ILOILO CITY --There’s a call to synchronize data on tourist arrivals in Boracay Island in Malay town, Aklan province following the alleged breach in the number of tourists allowed per day during the Holy Week.
“There was a problem with the data. The numbers did not synchronize. It should be synchronized,” said Aklan Governor Florencio Miraflores at the meeting of the government’s interagency task force on Friday.
Miraflores refuted an earlier claim by Secretary Bernadette Romulo-Puyat of the Department of Tourism (DOT) that there were 21,252 tourists who visited last April 14 (Holy Thursday) and another 22,519 tourists on April 15 (Good Friday).
Miraflores said that only 12,176 new tourists arrived in Boracay on April 14 and that 4,320 tourists also left the island resort that day.
Miraflores pointed out that the numbers of tourists are based on the terminal and environmental fees paid by each visitor to the Aklan provincial government, which manages the jetty port where tourists ride a boat to Boracay Island from mainland Malay town.
The national government in 2018 set a guideline that there should only be 19,215 tourists per day in Boracay Island. The 2018 carrying capacity also set a limit of 6,405 new tourists entering the resort island. The 19,215 capacity per day was calculated in terms of the average stay of each tourist in Boracay, which is three days.
“But in reality, we cannot really track that,” said Mayor Frolibar Bautista of Malay town.
Both Bautista and Miraflores called for an updated version of Boracay’s carrying capacity with emphasis on synchronizing data of tourists, tourism workers and local residents.
The Department of Environment and Natural Resources (DENR) is currently working to update Boracay’s carrying capacity.
“But it will be finished by the end of June 2022,” said Martin Jose Despi, the general manager of the DENR-led Boracay Inter-Agency Rehabilitation Management Group (BIARMG).